Shamanism 101 (original) (raw)
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal Vol. 5 No. 2 (April 2014)
The extraordinary permeates our lives and landscapes. By extraordinary, I refer to that which typically transcends the mundane: things that are considered to be supernatural, paranormal, exceptional, anomalous, magical, spiritual, religious, uncanny, transcendent, and so forth. Some of these are occurrences or encounters which happen unexpectedly, experiences that can prove life changing; some form part of specific social beliefs and behaviours, are ongoing, can be invoked; and yet others are more subtle, even delicate. While there is much to be learned from comparing and contrasting, we cannot adequately capture or explain the extraordinary within a universal categorical system: it is wide ranging, crosscultural, sensuous, a personally and publically lived facet of human existence.
In this article we compare the encounter with the supernatural-experiences in which a person senses the immaterial-in ailand and in the United States.
The Futures of Magic: Ethnographic theories of unbelief, doubt, and opacity in contemporary worlds. A Workshop convened by Richard Irvine and Theodoros Kyriakides, 2018
I take as my starting point the premise that Western ‘moderns’ are not so different from people in so-called pre-industrial, small-scale societies and never have been (Latour, 1993; Josephson-Storm, 2017), and that in today’s world, to a greater or lesser extent, Western forms of education and globalisation mean that everyone is faced with the question of choosing between different sorts of cosmology (Taylor, 2004), or is at least aware that others might have a different view of the world. I also assume that, as Lévy-Bruhl (1975) accepted in his later writings, logical and mystical thinking co-exist in all societies and in every human-mind. Having said that, there is a disjunction between the popular appetite for the paranormal, personal experience of Psi phenomena, and religious and spiritual practices on the one hand, and a fairly extreme physicalist straight-jacket that manifests itself in the media, within academia and in academic publishing on the other. In the United Kingdom and other parts of the Western world new spaces and practices are being created that seek to legitimise forms of magical thinking. I am going to leave religion on one side and focus in particular on the spaces between science and magic in which personal experiences that cannot be accommodated by the current dominant medical and scientific models are expressed, necessitating new or expanded understandings of the way the world works. Anthropologists have made some cautious moves towards validating personal and interpersonal experience as a respectable research tool (Briggs, 1974; Jackson, 1996; Jakobsen, 1999; Turner and Bruner, 1986), and have described their own uncanny experiences in the field, whether from a perspective of doubt in the interpretations offered by their hosts (Favret-Saada, 1980; Louw, 2015), by internalising emic explanations (Stoller, 1987; Turner, 1992), or while struggling to make sense of the challenge these experiences can pose to one’s settled view of the world (Clifton, 1992; Jenkins, 2015). The potentially transformative effects of fieldwork in general and extraordinary experiences in particular have also found their way into academic texts (Goulet & Miller, 2007; Young & Goulet, 1994). Having gained at least a glimmer of a very different psychic world and range of relationships with human and non-human others in Cameroon, I was taken aback by some of the continuities I later discovered among alternative healers in the United Kingdom, particularly when discussing forms of psychic energy, possession and the fluidity of the Self. This raised questions concerning the role of personal experience and its cultural manifestations and codifications on the one hand, and the challenges of interpreting uncanny or unusual experiences in a largely secular, rationalist society on the other. Along with David Hufford (1982), Michael Winkelman, (2016), Gregory Shushan (2018) and others, I suspect that first hand and recounted experiences of ‘magical’ phenomena, particularly near death experiences, encounters with the deceased, mediumistic and shamanic experiences, out of body travel, Psi (clairvoyance, telepathy, pre-cognition, psychokinesis), sleep paralysis and spirit possession, have profoundly shaped the ways in which human beings in all times and places have formed their religious ideas and cosmological outlook. Taking the example of spirit possession, I explore some of the ways in which experiences that appear to be universal and ancient appear or reappear in Western society to be interpreted in ways that seek a sometimes uneasy accommodation with normative medical, scientific (and religious) models of reality. Ethnographic enquiry is based on a conference organised by the Spirit Release Forum (SRF) in London (Bowie, 2017), and some of the wider work of those involved in this event. Motivations for involvement in the work of the SRF and similar bodies vary, but simple curiosity and a research agenda (Haraldsson, 2012) seems to play less of a role than direct experience of the intrusion of spirits into an existing clinical practice, which then leads clinicians new and unorthodox directions (Fiore, 1995; Zinser, 2010). In some cases a first-hand haunting or possession experience leads those affected to search for an explanation and relief or release from an unwanted and disturbing intrusion. Engagement in a world of spirits is not seen as an alternative to or escape from religion, science, or the ‘ordinary’ world, but as a result of ghostly or spirit-related experiences the world as it was has often slipped from view. Rationalist explanations for extraordinary and often frightening and life-changing encounters with spirits cannot be wished away and, as Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Normandy peasant farmers informed her, the Church can generally only provide a small, and not very powerful means of combatting the power of witchcraft and other psychic phenomena (1980). The medical profession may well pronounce the sufferer insane and resort to chemical treatments and perhaps incarceration. A de-witcher, shaman, spirit release therapist or suitably trained and experienced medium is therefore sought out, often as a last resort, although they may come disguised as a regular psychologist, psychiatrist or alternative healer (almost certainly in private practice). The focus of this particular SRF conference was mental health and ways in which a phenomenology of spirits and spirit possession can help provide clinical help for various types of mental illness. Much of the focus was on schizophrenia and hearing voices, conditions poorly understood and inadequately treated by conventional pharmaceutical and psychiatric methods, but which appear amenable to spirit release therapy. A range of other conditions, including obsessions and compulsions and Tourettes, which are similarly unresponsive to psychoanalytic treatment, are fertile ground for ‘magical’ healing methods (cf. Rapoport, 1989). Most of those taking part in the conference were both open to studying the effects of spirit release techniques in clinical situations and realistic about the barriers that such ideas openly expressed encounter within the NHS.
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal (Vol. 8 No. 1, March 2017)
Editor’s Introduction: Revisiting Cultural Evolution and Technological Evolution in Consciousness Studies - Mark A. Schroll A Quest for a Temple to Sleep In - Sarah Janes The Big Dream and Archaeo-Geo-Neuro-Pharmaco-Parapsychological Theories - David Luke Odin: Wandering Shaman Seeking Truth - Mark A. Schroll Commentary: Dreams, Drugs and the Engines of Creativity - Ryan Hurd Nature Awareness and Psychedelics: Report and Commentary on a Presentation by Ralph Metzner and Kathleen Harrison - Heather Walker REVIEW: Dr. Strange: A Cinematic Journey into the Multiverse and Otherworldly Realities - Mark A. Schroll REVIEW: Cultural Perspectives on Mental Wellbeing: Spiritual Interpretations of Symptoms in Medical Practices by Natalie Tobert - Teresa McLaren Revisiting the Meaning of Chief Seattle’s Speech - Mark A. Schroll The Meaning of the Cover Design: Envisioning a Cosmic Archetypal Model of Personality - Mark A. Schroll The Meaning of the Hourglass Symbol - Regina U. Hess The Archetypal Cauldron: A Clinical Application of the Anti-Hero in Transpersonal Art Therapy and the Hebraic Lore of the Golem - Claire Polansky Catalysts that Initiate Embodied Knowing: Reflection on Individuation, Synchronicity and Ritual Space - Tanya Hurst Reply to Tanya Hurst & Wendy E. Cousins - Claire Polansky Commentary: Reflections on the Supernatural and its Relation to Spiritual Emergency/Emergence - Claire Polansky Escaping the Night of the Living Dead: Toward a Transpersonal Ecosophy - Mark A. Schroll
Towards an experiential analysis of shamanism
American Ethnologist, 1980
There are numerous approaches to the study of shamanism.' Anthropologists, psychologists and religious historians have attributed to it a wide spectrum of cultural and psychological perspectives. In this paper, we concentrate upon the altered states of consciousness (ASC)' experienced by the shaman during ceremonial performances. In studying this phenomenon, certain experiential characteristics of the shaman's trance as they occur in 42 cultures (see Appendix) will be identified.' The experiential characteristics delineated are often referred to in the literature: magical flight, possession, and the control, memory and cultural orientation of trance.